by Ian Pugh For Kevin James and his
co-writer, the talking cat from "Sabrina the Teenage Witch", it's not
enough that Paul Blart (James) is a fat moron prone to knocking things
over with the sheer force of his girth--he must also be completely
oblivious, fully convinced that he possesses more power and
responsibilities as a mall cop than any reasonable person would
believe. So what to do when Paul's newest trainee (Keir O'Donnell)
turns out to be a Hans Gruber wannabe who takes over the mall with his
hip young gang in a bid to clean it out? A feature-length parody of Die
Hard has
long stopped being an enticing prospect, given that Die Hard
itself has been deconstructed to death by the fact of its enormous
influence on the action genre (to the degree that the "Die Hard
in an X" template actually became the dominant model for action movies
in the 1990s), with the proverbial final nail driven in by a third
sequel, Live
Free or Die Hard, that concluded there was no point
in still pretending our everyman hero was anything but invincible. As Paul
Blart: Mall Cop sees it, the only way to endue the John
McClane archetype with any tension is to make him fat and stupid. The
first time we see Paul, he's shovelling food into his mouth, his
sweater stained with perspiration from beneath his man-boobs, shortly
before his hypoglycaemia kicks in and sidelines him from joining the
police academy. But he's got a big heart or something, and that's what
counts, right?

Wrong. In bending over backwards to
transform this schmuck into an unlikely hero--emphasis on the
"unlikely"--Paul Blart: Mall Cop mistakes pity for
empathy. Given that the first third of the picture is devoted to a
perennial loser who drunkenly embarrasses himself in front of his dream
girl (Jayma Mays), his preordained victory over the mall's invaders and
winning of the hot redhead's affections has nothing to do with what
sort of person he is. At least, not in the way you're thinking. Die
Hard
proposes that, left to his own devices, a quick-witted man can
overcome insurmountable odds; Paul Blart: Mall Cop
posits that a stumbling buffoon should overcome the
same odds, since, gawrsh, he's such a pathetic human being it's the
least life could do for him, ain't it? James is a likable enough actor,
yet the movie is never funny. It mines its humour exclusively from
Paul's pratfalling failures, simultaneously distancing him from us and
demanding our sympathies--and it's not exciting, his triumph, not
because it's preordained, but because it isn't a reward earned by pluck
so much as it's an obligatory bone tossed at him for being a sad-eyed
puppy dog. Even when Paul is draped in black from head to toe, the idea
that he could ever be an action hero is at once laughably ridiculous
and soporifically comforting.

It's just a movie, cry 150 million
dollars' worth of defenders, but that's the problem, isn't it? What
makes Observe
and Report, Jody Hill's interpretation of the same
basic premise, such a difficult film to absorb is how it examines the
factors that would realistically mold the personality of an overzealous
security guard--a personality that doesn't lend itself to feel-good
dismissal, what with the weight of failure obviously feeding a certain
madness in him--and portrays the inevitable victory as something awful
and inappropriate. Really, the only reason you should have to sit
through Paul Blart: Mall Cop is as part of an
instructive double feature with Observe and
Report. It's the quintessence of everything Hill
rails against: the lame, uncritical comedy; the inexplicable rage
directed at foreign cultures (found in a goofy Indian stalker (Adhir
Kalyan) who inadvertently becomes Paul's computer-intelligence man);
and the idea that a loser deserves to succeed mainly to relieve an
audience's guilt over laughing at him for a solid hour-and-a-half.

Furthermore, it's high time somebody
produced another Punch-Drunk
Love; that Adam Sandler's immature
sociopath-cum-populist hero is now being specifically
peddled to toddlers and grade-schoolers strikes me as a dangerous turn
of events, if not exactly a shocking one. Bedtime Stories
charges Sandler's blue-collar dickhead Skeeter with the care of his
niece and nephew (Laura Ann Kesling and Jonathan Morgan Heit),
whereupon Skeeter takes the opportunity to complain about his life as a
hotel handyman in the form of thinly-veiled fairytales. When the kids
add happy endings that come true, "Word Processor of the Gods"-like, he
attempts to steer the magic in his favour by crafting tales that see
him conquering his professional rival (Guy Pearce) and the boss's daughter (Teresa Palmer). Whether it's right for Skeeter to treat his
sister's children as golden geese, promising money and sex at his
demand, is never addressed--indeed, the only thing for which he's
actively indicted is preaching to the young'ns that happy endings
aren't possible whenever things aren't going his way.

Naturally, from the very first frame
Skeeter's ultimate happy ending is never in doubt--but unlike Paul
Blart: Mall Cop, you're supposed to feel perfectly
comfortable handing him the keys to the kingdom and letting the rest of
the world serve as his punchline. Driven by a particularly selfish kind
of fantasy--with Skeeter/Sandler giving himself the opportunity to play
John Wayne, Ben-Hur, and Han Solo--Bedtime Stories
lives and dies by the idea that Adam Sandler is awesome and dwarves are
inherently funny. (Seriously--did you ever notice they're not of
average height? Isn't thatfuckingHILARIOUS?)
Bedtime Stories is so loathsome
because it tries to extend the shelf life of Sandler's noxious,
egocentric shtick by slipping it in the Trojan horse of a kid's movie: Playing another man granted license to manipulate the universe to his
own ends (as he does literally here and in Click;
as he does figuratively in everything else), he learns superficial
lessons while occasionally flanked by an idiot sidekick (Russell Brand)
and Rob Schneider in another barnside-broad ethnic performance. You can
ask why Sandler continues to crank out the same movie again and again
despite showing sparks of talent outside his wheelhouse, though I
suspect the answer is depressingly self-evident. The real puzzler is
why director Adam Shankman would expend all the goodwill he earned with
Hairspray
on trashy piffle like this, which practically directs itself.

THE
BLU-RAY DISCS
Sony brings Paul Blart: Mall Cop
to Blu-ray in a curiously dull, blown-out 1.85:1, 1080p presentation
that equalizes night and day, indoors and out--nearly every scene is
imbued with a distracting, bland greyness. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio
is similarly unimpressive: somewhat contrary to the subject matter,
dialogue is prioritized over all other facets of the mix. (Things do
amp up a bit when it comes time to play some licensed music.) On
another track, find a genial, self-deprecating rap session with Kevin
James and producer Todd Garner that, from their perpetually casual tone
of voice, makes it sound like the entire crew forged a nice camaraderie
over the course of filming. Almost everything they have to say,
however, could and perhaps should be appended with the phrase "I guess
you had to be there."

Video-based supplements begin with ten
standard-def deleted scenes (12 mins. in toto) that, while nothing
special, do offer in the earlygoing a few pleasant moments with Paul on
the job presumably excised for humanizing the inelegant Mr. Blart and
not containing enough slapstick. A shitload of featurettes--well,
eleven--follow, featuring interviews with the cast and crew that
pretend to glean the production but typically revolve around goofing
off on the set. Hey, at least they were having fun.
"Kevin James: Not Your Average Mall Cop" (6 mins., HD) is, title aside,
a fairly comprehensive overview of the forces that brought the film
together; "Action Sports Junkies" (6 mins., HD) profiles the
action-sports aficionados who comprise the film's sinister gang;
"Stunts" (10 mins., HD) delves into the specifics of the slapstick
action with comments from stunt coordinator Chris O'Hara (good to know
that James did so many of his own stunts); and "The Mall" (5 mins., HD)
discusses the thrills and difficulties of shooting in a working
shopping centre.

From there, the bonus material simply gives
up any pretense of interest/usefulness. Shot and scored like a
skateboarding video, "On Set with Mike 'Rooftop' Escamilla" (6 mins.,
HD) showcases candid stunt footage and "Fun on Set" (6 mins., HD) is
best described as a behind-the-scenes blooper reel. "Mike V. vs. Mall
Cop" (3 mins., HD) stages a confrontation between James (playing
Blart--or, at least, a mall cop) and extreme
skater/cinematic thug Mike Vallely, and "Mall Cop Response" (2 mins.,
HD) provides James's interviewed reaction to said confrontation. More of
the same in "Thoughts with Kevin James" (2 mins., HD), a less filtered
version of the actor's comedy routine that reaches into the semantics
of food courts and moustaches--not much of a surprise that his
"thoughts" basically boil down to "fat people are fat." "Free Running
vs. Parkour" (3 mins., HD) offers a too-brief
discussion-through-example of the two arts, while "Sugar" (2 mins., HD)
sees the acrobatic Victor Lopez running and leaping across the mall on
a mad dash to deliver James a packet of--what else?--sugar. Finally, a
link to BD Live allows you to connect to Cinechat, apparently an
Instant Messaging service that lets you chat with your friends as you
watch the movie! Just what I always wanted! An unnecessary promo for
Blu-ray cues up on startup and joins trailers for Click,
The House Bunny, You
Don't Mess with the Zohan, Ghostbusters, 50
First Dates, Hitch,
R.V.,
and Hancock
under the "Previews" menu.

Bedtime Stories docks on
Disney Blu-ray in a three-disc set that includes the retail DVD as well
as a Digital Copy, I suppose for parents with too many gadgets and too
little regard for what their children watch. Maybe HiDef has distorted
my perception, but the accompanying DVD's 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen
image seemingly looks blurrier and more smeared than it should. Makes
you wonder if Disney's trying to forcibly push the slowpokes into the
next generation of home video--a notion bolstered by a guilt-tripping
Blu-ray promo starring Cody and Dylan Sprouse on the same platter. The
film's 1080p BD incarnation does have the advantage of a brilliantly
sharp transfer, albeit one that throws the cinematography's overlit
flatness into painful relief. Rupert Gregson-Williams's score--which
sounds exactly like that for every other children's film ever made
(think orchestra swells and meandering strings)--is deftly spread
across the soundstage via the attendant 5.1 DTS-HD track, an
unimpeachable rendering of an uneven mix.

A brief helping of equally brief
extras--each infested with too many clips from the movie--begins with
"Until Gravity Do Us Part" (4 mins., HD), which surveys the multi-stage
production of the Flash Gordon/Star Wars-inspired
bedtime story, complete with interviews from the visual effects
supervisor and fight choreographer. In "To All the Little People" (6
mins., HD), Heit and Kesling display surprising sophistication whilst
describing their lives on set--they definitely deserve more substantial
credit than Sandler's impish "kids are great!" platitudes. Next is
"It's Bugsy" (4 mins., HD), another one of those infuriating docs
wherein the cast and crew fawn over some animal/fictional character (in
this case, the bug-eyed gerbil that accounts for a good 40% of Bedtime
Stories' attempts at humour) as a big star who was great to
work with. No "Outtakes" (6 mins., HD) for me, thanks, and "Deleted
Scenes" (10 mins., HD) are merely negligible extensions of
already-lousy jokes from the final cut. A link to Disney BD Live wraps
up the disc along with a block of Sneak Peeks--i.e., commercials for Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs, G-Force, Monsters
Inc.,
Disney Blu-ray, and Disney Movie Rewards--that also cues up on startup. Originally published: May 27, 2009.